


Five times Enjolras couldn't communicate right + the time he understood absolutely everything

by neurodramaticfool



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Français | French, Hotels, M/M, language problems, what not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 02:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4648722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neurodramaticfool/pseuds/neurodramaticfool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five times poor traveller Enjolras had to put up with his infuriating receptionist who didn't speak a word of English.<br/>Plus, the one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five times Enjolras couldn't communicate right + the time he understood absolutely everything

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, guys.  
> This is my first time in a fandom I hold as high as possible in the regard of producing wonderful fanfics. I won't be as good as the authors I follow, but I'm trying... D:
> 
> I apologize for all the languages used in this fic and all the mistakes there might be, as the only things I'm sure of are the few words in Italian (my mother tongue, yess!). If you want to correct my horrible French, my even more horrible Dutch and my slightly less horrible English, you're welcome to do so :)
> 
> EDIT: thank a lot to the beautiful people who helped me: Alhena_Kaus for the French stuff and Miriel for the Dutch things, thank you! You don't know how happy I was to receive your help :)))

**5 times Enjolras couldn't communicate right**

 

**I.**

 

Enjolras got out of the airplane taking a deep breath and running a hand through his blond curls, he'd left Edinburgh on a hot afternoon, and was glad to find the Belgian air just as warm. 

A pretty hostess, clad in a yellow shirt and a blue skirt, with a remarkable hairstyle and a bright, kind smile, waved him goodbye wishing him a nice stay. He smiled back at her, not even remembering what her name was, despite having made an effort of memorizing all the cabin crew's names at the beginning of the flight. _You never know,_ he had thought. He believed it was something like Arianna, or Annika, or maybe Malika? He sighed, letting the thought go. It didn't matter, in the end, he tried to persuade himself.

A couple of Scottish girls, who were sitting in front of him on the airplane, ran past him, laughing, once they'd retrieved their baggages. They had big backpacks and shining Interrail bracelets at their wrists. Enjolras smiled nostalgically, remembering the times he'd done that same things with his lifelong friends. An elderly lady, with something aristocratic about the way she held herself, stared at him with a satisfied smile, when he let her pass, evidently displeased by the behaviour of all the other youngsters on the flight. 

 

He got a small red agenda out of his trolley suitcase's front pocket and followed the indications on the panels. He got to the bus terminal, catched the right bus and soon found himself in a train station, where he'd been told he could get a sort of underground to get to his hotel. 

The problem, at least part of it anyway, was that when he got out of the station that Google Maps designed as his, he was almost standing in the middle of a motorway, or a very similar kind of road. _What the fuck._ He checked on his phone again, even activated the GPS, and nothing, he was supposedly in the right place. In fact, he was just five minutes away from his hotel. 

 

_Okay._ He took a deep breath and walked and walked, the five minutes turned into ten minutes of walking in the suburbs of a small Belgian city right in the middle of nowhere. _Perfect for going back and forth to Brussels my ass,_ he swore to himself, at the hundreth broken sidewalk step he tried to get his suitcase past. He was now cursing the sun and the heat and the fact that he was wearing a suit and a shirt and it was now a point of honour arriving at the hotel's reception with his jacket on, as taking it off would have meant defeat. 

Finally, a decaying sign with a red “HOTEL” written on appeared within his sight. He stopped, to straighten his jacket and fix his hair, and accelerated. 

He pushed the door open and found himself in a motel-looking environment, all geometric shapes and low ceilings. _I picked it because it was the cheapest one,_ he reminded himself, before approaching the reception, where nobody was.

 

“Hello,” he tried to call, already a bit annoyed by the whole situation. Nobody answered. He proceeded to pressing the call button angrily. 

“ _Bonjour,”_ a man greeted, appearing behind the reception table. He was grinning, in what could only be defined a wicked way. 

“Hello, good afternoon,” Enjolras repeated, trying to make his message clear. _No French, you lazy-._

“ _Oui, qu'est-ce que vous voulez, m'sieur? 1_” the man asked, and, from the little French Enjolras knew, it wasn't even a respectful way of approaching a client. 

“I have a reservation, I have also paid and everything, I'd just like to check in,” he went on, in English, trying to not let his Scottish accent show too much. The man already seemed lost on what he'd said, let alone if he had spoken with his accent let loose...

“ _Pardon?_ French?” he stuttered, his eyes wide open. Enjolras noted with irritation that they were of a really nice blue, which made an interesting contrast with the black of his hair.

“I don't-” he started, and then he stopped. It was all lost on him anyway. He just took a printed reservation from his suitcase and the man smiled, content. He typed something quickly on the computer's keyboard. 

“ _Monsieur..._ Enjolras, _bienvenue en Belgique. Voilà votre clé, votre chambre est la numéro 150. C'est au premier étage, à gauche. En cas de besoin, appuyez sur la touche 1 ou descendez à la reception, 2” _he explained quickly. 

_ Really?  _ Enjolras felt like he was being made victim of a horrible joke. Where was the candid camera? He'd had enough of this, the actors could drop their masks and go back to speaking English, please. Because, if the sense of uneasiness would have been huge for everyone who didn't speak French, the fact that Enjolras had proven incapable of learning languages didn't help at all. 

“Which floor?” he asked, wearily, desperate to at least take a shower and forget about all this, at least until this useless receptionist was replaced by a colleague. 

The man sticked one finger in the air, a finger with a really nice silver ring, Enjolras noticed, annoyed at himself more than ever.

“Is there a lift, at least?” he snapped.

The man had already put on a conspicous pair of headphones and was moving his head along a rhythm only he could feel. The blond sighed and started climbing the stairs.

 

** II. **

 

Enjolras had taken a shower that had lasted at least ten minutes. The bathroom was of utmost small dimensions, but at least the water pressure was nice and the temperature was perfectly adjustable, and was never too hot nor too cold. 

He had then taken his laptop and discovered a wonderful free Wi-Fi network, without any passwords of sorts. He'd taken a deep breath, perhaps it wasn't going to be all bad as it had seemed. If only he could find an English-speaking receptionist...

He had flicked through all the documents he had been asked to bring to some important member of the European Commission. The realisation of one of his biggest dreams could depend on how he managed to influence this particular person. If his words were heeded, a Open European University Project could be started and students from all the Union might attend lectures in foreign countries, without taxation differences, or different marking systems. It would be a dream come true... 

 

Suddenly, it was half past eight. Enjolras felt a sting of hunger in the lowest part of his stomach – maybe it was even upper bowel, he certainly didn't know.  _ I need to find a place where to eat something.  _

He checked on the Internet, but the nearest restaurant was some steakhouse, 3km from there and, even if he hadn't been a vegetarian, he certainly would have liked to avoid walking that much, considering he was already running short on clean shirts.

 

As much as the thought did not please him, there was only one solution left: ask the reception.  _ Maybe there's someone else,  _ he faintly hoped. But the lopsided grin and the black mess of hair were the same as before. He silently prayed some divine entity to help him, to work some miracle, to make him be able to speak fluent French all of a sudden, to be able to communicate by sign language – as if English Sign Language would have been the same of French Sign Language. He felt like crying, why hadn't he at least tried harder to learn?!

 

He noticed the receptionist was at the phone, speaking a language that didn't remotely sound like French. But wasn't English, either.  _ Christ. _

“ _Oke, oke. Dank u, tot ziens. Ja, dank u. Goedenacht, 3” _he laughed into the phone. What had he said? Enjolras could only make out a couple of _thank you_ s, nothing else. As for what language he was speaking, to him it could have been Klingon, for what mattered. 

“ _Bonsoir,”_ he then greeted Enjolras, “ _comment puis-je vous aider 4?” _

Enjolras decided he was going to try and speak as slowly as he could to make himself understandable, without lowering himself to stuttering random French words that he thought he remembered from school.

“Okay,” he started, “where can I eat something? For dinner, I mean”. 

The man seemed to have understood the general message and so he shook his head, looking a bit depressed.

“ _Il n'y a pas de restaurants ici. Vous dévez aller au centre ville, si vous voulez manger 5,” _he said, slowly, but Enjolras refused to understand, even if it should have been clear enough from the furrowed brow on the other man's face.

“Take-away?” he tried, perfectly calm – or at least trying to be perfectly calm – while the receptionist relaxed a bit, going back to that slightly creepy smile. 

“ _Bon, vous pouvez appeler le restaurant chinois._ Chinese, phone. _Ou téléphoner pour une pizza à l'emporter. Si vous prenez une pizza, commandez-en une de plus. 6_” he grinned again, while the message slowly sank in Ejolras, even though he failed to understand the second half of the speech.

“Listen, mate,” he started, feeling more than a little offended, “ _you_ are the receptionist. _You_ phone them”.

The man arched his eyebrows, and lifted the phone. “Pizza,  _donc?_ ”.

Enjolras nodded, angrily. “Only tomato and cheese,” he added, and then, faintly, “please”. 

 

The receptionist spoke with the pizza restaurant a bit too long, laughing and cheerfully chatting with the person on the other end. Then he went in the back room and got out with a bottle of beer and two glasses.  _Ah, even worst. Drinking on the job!_ Enjolras complained to himself, deciding that he'd be certain to leave a negative review of all the situation on TripAdvisor. No Excellence Certificate was to be given to that hole. 

He was then offered a glass full of beer by the receptionist, who was now smiling at him without saying a word.

“Thank you, I guess,” Enjolras muttered, sniffing the piercing smell of the beverage and lifting the glass to his mouth. The receptionist, whose name was scribbled on a small badge on his hips – _What? Couldn't he even bother to hang it to his shirt? -_ wasn't drinking yet, but was watching Enjolras with a odd look on his face. When the guest noticed, the receptionist, R, for that was the only thing written on the name badge, smiled innocently. 

And then the pizza arrived. And R went to pick the two boxes from the young delivery boy who seemed to know him.  _And_ Enjolras took notice of the jeans R was wearing. 

 

The first thought was:  _totally unprofessional,_ because ripped jeans to work in a hotel were absolutely a crime towards professional hotel stewards. Something about that Monsieur Gustave and the young Zero came to his mind and he partially cursed Courfeyrac for having had him watch that film. 

The second thought was something that he thought would have needed censorship if put on TV, and had something to do with how tight they were, and how they hung around R's hips and,  _well, yes, his ass._

He was so ashamed of himself that he forgot to ask how much he had to pay for that pizza and ended up taking his own box upstairs. 

R laughed wholeheartedly while he all but ran away, and said in a low, amused, tone: “ _Ah, les Anglais et leur flegme. Ils voient un truc imprévu et ça suffit à leur faire perdre la tête. On va rire, mon ami. On va rire..._ ”.7

 

** III. **

 

Enjolras had to wake up quite early on the following morning, so he had decided to sleep as soon as he could, so as to get a long and reposing sleep. Those were his intentions, at least, because what he hadn't been able to forsee was what looked like an impromptu dance party in the surroundings of the hotel, not in the parking lot that he could see from his window and not even in the hall, since the really loud music seemed to come from the outside. 

The noise woke him, and, when he threw a sleepy and slightly panicked glance to his watch, it was 3AM, which meant it had caught him right in the middle of his sleep. He tried to go back to sleep, he actually tried, but it wasn't humanly possible.  _What could I do?!_ He almost shouted in his own head, while trying to shut all that noise up. 

 

And so he thought he would join all the other, until that moment invisible, guests and go and complain at the reception desk, where he now firmly hoped there would be someone that wasn't R. He wouldn't have been able to look him in the eyes, if he had been there, after his somewhat crazy exploit of some hours earlier. 

He wasn't wrong, at least in one respect: there were other people queuing in front of the reception desk, all talking over the others, in loud complaints for the music, for their inability to sleep. Then he noticed no one was at the reception and the panic got even bigger. What was going on? 

In his fashionable outfit made of a fading T-shirt of Loopallu Festival, tracksuit shorts and flip flops, Enjolras elected to go out himself and check: he was awake anyway, maybe they'd kidnapped the receptionist and who knows what. Okay, that was just the result of 3AM thinking. 

 

As soon as he'd gotten out of the door, flanked the building and turned the corner, he clashed with someone who was just turning the corner himself. The person caught him by the shoulders to avoid him falling and steadied him.

“Oh my god. I'm so sorry, I'm sorry,” Enjolras blurted out, holding to whoever it was that had just crossed his path. 

“ _C'est tout en ordre 8” ._And, _oh no_ , not him, and why did he just have to collide in the most physical way with that awfully infuriating and only-French-speaking receptionist who never seemed to go to bed?!

“Are you alright?!” Enjolras panicked another bit. And then: “What the hell is going on?!”.

R laughed, letting go of his grasp on Enjolras's arms. He then gestured vauely in the direction of the back of the hotel, where the music was coming from.

 

“ _Je leur ai dit qu'ils ne pouvaient pas faire de la musique à cette heure de la nuit, mais tout ce qu'ils m'ont dit, ça à été 'tiens, prende un peu de vodka'. Je vais appeller la police, je suis vraiment désolé, 9”_ R later explained to all the other hotel guests, who had gathered around him as soon as he'd gotten back in. A few people got back to their rooms, after this words, but Enjolras lingered, hoping that he would get a translation of sorts. 

A middle aged woman, who was clad in a bright pink pyijamas, asked him something in what sounded like Spanish. 

“ _No, chiamo la polizia e tutto si risolverà, non si preoccupi, signora. Buonanotte 10”. _

“You speak Spanish and another language and you don't speak English... you're a horrible mistery...” Enjolras whispered to himself, but apparently R had heard something of that, which meant that he hadn't whispered at all. 

“ _C’était de l’italien, pas de l’espagnol.” 11 _he murmured, as an answer, smiling in a tired way. Enjolras thought that he must have worked for longer than he shoud have had, but didn't have the time to properly think about it, because R was now speaking on the phone, evidently reporting that strange music, and he was serious all of a sudden, and the realization that he was actually being good at his job dawned on Enjolras. 

 

He watched him write something on a post-it and stick it to the computer desktop and give the police officer a phone number before hanging up. 

“ _Alors, du café? 12_” R asked, when he noticed that Enjolras was still standing in front of the reception desk, giving him some odd looks. 

“Oh..” was all he managed to say, when he realised he had been staring for the whole duration of the phone call. R smiled again, and Enjolras felt heat running up to his cheeks and then he turned towards that awul coffee and hot beverages machine that stood in a corner, and had the air of giving the worst drinks ever. 

“How much is a cappuccino?” he asked, to no one specific, pressing the corresponding button. 

“ _Ne prends pas ce capuccino là,”_ the receptionist almost shouted, panicked. “ _Il est horrible. Attendez 13”. _And he disappeared again in that back room of his, while the blond Scottish man stood in front of the reception desk and wondered what was happening. 

He got back with a cup of cappuccino a minute later, plus one of coffee and milk for himself. 

“Wait, I will have to pay you back for all the nice things you're doing,” Enjolras protested, while the other dismissed the sentence with a shake of his head. The blond didn't have the time to worry about what he himself had just said, since he had made a firm point of finding that man irritating and not nice, not at all, when a police officer came to the door, knocking loudly. 

R rolled his eyes and as soon as the policeman came in he started to almost shout. From what Enjolras could get, he was telling R that there being an authorised party just outside the premises of the hotel was something the hotel could take care of themselves. 

R patiently explained him something about the guests and their complaints, and then offered him another cup of coffee yet, which the man refused with a stern look. 

Then the police officer turned to Enjolras, who was already growing annoyed with his attitude. “You are a guest,” the officer stated, in a very accented English.

“I am,” he confirmed. 

“And you are here and not in your room because this noise can't make you sleep. Have you already filled the complaints forms? Did this man give you problems? Is he keeping you downstairs purposefully?”.

R was looking a them with a blank face and was already fiddling with his mobile phone and texting someone. 

“There has been...” he hesitated, shooting a look to the dark haired receptionist, who looked like he hadn't slept in three days and still was putting up with all that mess, “no problem at all. I'm an insomniac, raves or no raves,” he lied, “I'm here because I... I like to roam while I can't sleep. And that man was keeping me company”. 

“Don't pay him anything more because he's being gentle with you. It's his job. And don't fall victim of his advances, just in case,” the policeman concluded, leaving the hotel without adding anything else. 

 

“ _Connard homophobe, 14_” was all R commented, before going back behind his desk and sitting with his headphones again. 

Enjolras felt bad for him, even as the loud music stopped all of a sudden and the police sirens took its place. 

Seeing as R was purposefully ignoring him, not willing to entertain any conversation of sorts, he took a dépliant from the desk and scribbled something with the pen that laid next to it. 

It was a doodle of a policeman with an angry face, made of a revesed D as his mouth and two straight lines as his eyes and two really bent eyebrows. Next to the policeman's face there was “BAD BAD COP” written all in caps. 

He left and went back to his room. He slept until his alarm went off.

 

** IV. **

 

He had gone to Brussels, he had done everything he had gone to Belgium for, he was even sure it was going to be a good day, when he'd woken up. 

But it hadn't been. Not at all. The representative he was supposed to speak to wasn't there, so he had been bounced from one politician to the other, to no avail.

Moreover, he had gotten lost like three times in that underground of theirs, where there were signals for the lines and there there weren't and one just couldn't understand where they were going. 

And even if everyone had been kind to him, they all seemed to think he was a dreamer, with no concrete possibility of having his project approved. In addition, a pair of young and good loking secretaries, one Austrian girl and an Italian one, had felt the necessity of making obvious remarks on his looks and “how hot he was with that suit and red tie”, “but probably he is already with someone, just  _look at him_ , he can't possibly be single”, and, for their information – although he would never say that out loud – he was absolutely single and just as asbsolutely not interested in them. 

Oh, how he hated when people only judged him from his looks! 

 

He had to ask some other secretary to cancel his flight and book another one for the next day, if it was possible, because he was determined to try again the following morning. It was two years worth of work, he wasn't going to let it slip like that. 

 

He elected to take the rest of the day to visit Brussels, and he ended up eating street food next to the Royal Palace, while the tourists and the locals mixed before his eyes.

His train back to the hotel's town was nearly empty and he spent the whole ride reading on his Ebook. He realised that he would have to ask them if they had a spare room for him that night, since he had to spend another day there. 

When he got to the hotel, again with his suitcase and everything, there was a pretty girl, namely, Musichetta, on the reception, with a bored look on her face. She smiled at him and answered his question, registering him again in their database.

“I wonder why you would come back to this place for another night,” she commented, with her left eyebrow lifted, when she gave him his key. He frowned, while she giggled, beautiful red lips curved in a wicked smile. 

_ What problems did all the stewards have in that place?  _ And then it dawned on him that R wasn't there. And the new girl, that Musichetta, must have seen his confusion, because she started laughing definitely, a full laughter and a happy one. 

“May I give you advice, sir?” she added, before he could start climbing the stairs, “For dinner, there's a small reastaurant 1km from here, just across the road and then straight on”. 

He frowned again and thanked her, going upstairs for real. 

 

When he got back downstaits, headed for dinner where the girl had said, she was still there, beautiful smile and all, on the phone with someone, speaking French and laughing. 

“ _Je pense, mon cher, qu'il va arriver... à plus tard 15,” _and her laughter was frightening.

 

The restaurant was more than small, if possible, but the atmosphere seemed really good, bright lights and colourful table clothes. 

When he sat down and a waitress with dark hair and dark eyes, pretty but intimidating, came to take his order, he stuttered three words in French (having checked on Google Translate) and she went away. 

 

It wasn't until he went to pay for his dinner that he saw him, behind the till, shamelessly flirting with a young customer. R, with his blue eyes and dark curls and,  _ yes _ , even his jeans. There was no doubt. And then he wondered if that Musichetta girl had sent him there on purpose and, if so, why she'd done that. Again: what problems did those people have?

“ _Oh, bonsoir, 16_” the former receptionist and now waiter said, smiling much more politely than he had at the hotel, but still with a trace of his wicked smirk on his lips, “ _c'était bon?”._

Enjolras nodded, sliding him his credit card, and smiling back with a forced, mechanical smile. He was confused. What was all this? What was happening to him? 

“The food was really good,” he remembered to answer, before collecting his receipt. 

R was laughing again, shaking his head. 

“ _Vous restez en Belgique un jour de plus? 17” _he whispered, and, if Enjolras had been able to see them from an external point of view, he would have stated, as he'd done earlier, that he was, in fact, shamelessly flirting with him as well and, if possible, even with more enthusiasm and dedication to the cause than he'd done with the woman who paid before him. 

Enjolras stared at him in confusion, not understanding and not even catching the meaning, too lost in the colour of his eyes. 

“I'm going to the hotel,” he concluded, apparently without any sense. 

“ _Est-ce que c'est une invitation? 18” _he joked, watching him go. 

The dark haired girl neared him: “ _Nous l'avons perdu. Ja. Zeker. We zijn hem kwijt.”. 19_

 

** V. **

 

The next morning, when he got down, he already had his suitcase ready. He was going to take the train directly from Brussels to go to the airport. And he was really going to go back to Edinburgh, no matter how the day went. He'd decided that this was going to be his last occasion. 

 

He found the breakfast better than the previous day, he wasn't even too much annoyed by the noise the children of the family that sat next to him were making.  _It's going to be a good morning._

 

He went to the reception, where R was sitting, caught in a old book. 

“Good morning,” he told him, as soon as he approached him to pay for the second part of his stay, as Musichetta had practically begged him to pay the following morning. 

The other man smiled. 

“ _Bonjour, Apollon.” 20 _he said back, as he took his ID and credit card and inserted it in the pad. Apollo?! Really? Enjolras rolled his eyes, but couldn't help but being a bit honored by the nickname. 

“ _Est-ce que vous avez besoin de quelque chose d'autre, avant de partir? 21” _he asked, again with that strange smile on his lips. That was when Enjolras noticed just how much he had been staring at those lips for the past day. And he blushed, becoming a deep shade of red. He also realised that the other man seemed to have made a point of making him blush under his gaze, and that was unacceptable.

“I'd like to write to your manager about some things,” he said slowly, partially angry with himself for being so vulnerable, “can you give me some email or whatever?”.

R's face lit up. He scribbled something on a post it and gave it to Enjolras along with the receipt of all payments. 

 

When he left for Brussels he hadn't yet looked at the post-it note. 

 

He managed to meet the man he'd wanted to meet for as long as his project had started, his project was going to be evaluated carefully by his work group. He was so happy! The only thing he wanted now was talking to someone who could understand how he felt. 

“Ferre! Ferre!” he all but shouted into his microphone while going to the station, as soon as the other one picked up the fun.

“Hi, what's up?” his friend asked peacefully, while Courfeyrac, in the background shouted varied greetings. 

“We've made it! He said it's okay. He said it's great, but needs just a tiny bit of revising before being actually discussed in the commission...”.

“Woah! Great. Fantastic. Listen, there is something I've just read on the Internet that I think could interest you..” he began, but Enjolras cut him off, blabbering excitedly about all the people he had met and their words. He went on until he got to the underground station, where the gate was being closed by two men in bright yellow jackets.

“What? What are you doing? I need to get to the platforms, excuse me!” he snapped.

“Enje, that's what I saw on the Internet. There's an impromptu – well, as impromptu as it could be – anyway, there's a public transports strike. Do you have some way of getting to the airport? Can I do something for you?”.

Enjolras thought about his options, then he thanked Combeferre and hanged. 

 

He called the taxi: they didn't have any free car at that moment, everyone was moving by taxi. 

He called the police, panicking, they shouted something in French. 

He checked on Uber: he had no idea how it worked, so he let go of this possibility. 

He still had more than two hours to get to the airport on time. There was no need of panic. He walked in circles for ten minutes, until a young woman, who had been observing him silently until then, approached him.

“I need to go to the airport,” he exclaimed, when she asked him if he had problems, “there is no bus, no train, no taxi, available. I'm freaking out”.

The woman thought for a second. 

“You're here in some hotel? Can they help you?” she gently told him, starting to check other possibilities on her phone.

He remembered all of a sudden of the post-it note R had given him, and fished it out of his pockets.

 

There were an email of the hotel and two phone numbers for the hotel. 

He dialled the first.

“ _Allô? 22” _and it wasn't R, that he knew for sure. It was some older man, with no enthusiasm at all in his voice. 

“Hello, I stayed at your hotel for two nights, I checked out this morning, but I need a favour-”.

“ _Eponine! Dieu tout-puissant,cet idiot parle seulement anglais. Vite, vite! 23” _the man yelled, and a girl came to the phone.

“ _Hello?”_ she said, a bit rushed. And he knew that voice.

“It's the Scot who stayed at your hotel until this morning, I think I need help right now,” and he probably sounded even more upset than he already was.

“ _Oh. Apollon?”_ she asked, calmly. 

“Yes!” he managed not to shout.

“ _Grantaire, stupide idiot, c'est ton futur mari! 24” _she laughed, calling someone. “ _Anyway, tell me”._

“I need to get to the airport. I'm.. I'm in front of the European Commission. The underground is on a strike, a sudden strike. What do I do?!”.

“ _Oh, you just trust me,”_ and then she gave him a lot of directions, making sure that he had understood. “ _Go there and someone will be there to pick you up and take you to the airport. Before you ask, you prevedible idiot number 2, you won't need to pay, he'll do it for free, just because you're you”._

“What? Who are you talking about and what? What the hell? Who do you think you are?!” he exploded, starting to walk in the direction Eponine had told him.

“ _The owner's daughter. Grantaire!!”_ she shouted again, “ _Il se rend encore moins compte que toi de ce qui se passe. Vous êtes faits l’un pour l’autre. J'arrive pas à y croire! ” 25._

Whatever it was she was saying she sounded like she was choking on her laughter, Enjolras found himself annoyed by who had fun while he was distressed. 

He hung up.

 

** \+ the time he understood absolutely everything **

 

He had just gotten to the end of that freaking wood the girl had sent him through, when he saw an old car parked right where the path ended. 

 

“Apollo!” R shouted from the left side of the vehicle, waving his hand in the air, smiling happily and cheerfully.

_ Great.  _ Enjolras sassed himself, trying to ignore how happy he actually was that it was really R that was going to take him to the airport. 

“So, where are we going, sir?” the dark-haired man asked, placidly, as the Scot got in the car.

“To the airport, please,” he answered automatically and only then, only when they had already set in motion and they were zig-zaging through the traffic in a next-to-illegal way, he realised. “You _do_ speak English!”.

 

R turned for a split second to face him, smiling wildly. 

“You sent me crazy because you only spoke French and three hundred other languages but never, _never_ , English, and _now_ you speak English? What on Earth?! Why didn't you tell me?” he was beginning to relax, despite the harshness in his words, because of the low 80s music on the stereo and because of the light chuckle of his driver.

“Well, you never asked. You assumed I spoke your language and went on, without stopping to think. And when I started speaking in French, you never asked again if I spoke English,” he answered calmly, entering the motorway. And then he started to laugh like that was the funniest thing in the whole world, and that was more than infuriating.

 

“You've been unprofessional, you know that?” Enjolras stated, retreating on the extreme right of the car, as close to the window he could get. 

R smirked. 

“What? I even got you a pizza and a cappuccino. Not to speak of the fact that it was always you needing something special, darling”. 

_ Darling.  _

Enjolras was silent for a while.

 

“Why?” he asked, after a while.

“Why what, exactly? I don't read minds yet”.

“Why did you pay for my pizza, made my cappuccino and why are you taking me to the airport for free? Why did you name me Apollo? Why did your colleagues laugh when they saw me? Why did whatshername, ah, Musichetta, send me to your freaking restaurant? Why did the owner's daughter talk to you while she was talking to me? _Are you planning to kill me?_ ”.

R laughed like it was the end of the world, going faster than the speed limit would have authorised him to. 

Then he sighed. “No, I'm not planning to kill you, Apollo. As for the rest, I think you'll understand. Tell me, instead, what brought you here?”.

 

And he started narrating everything, from the beginning: his friends, their project, the opportunity of making it real, the European Commission, the fact that they only had the money to send one person and not more. Talking like that, without rest, without restrictions, was totally unusual, but all the tension that that project had built in him and R's attention were enough to let him loose. 

And R was listening and commenting, and he didn't agree but he didn't despise him, either. He didn't call him a dreamer, like many other had called him, and, if he murmured something like  _idéaliste_ it didn't matter, because he was smiling, almost fondly. 

 

“When is your flight?” he asked, when they were almost at the airport. 

“I still have one hour and a half,” Enjolras answered, checking his clock, “Without you, I wouldn't have made it on time. I owe you so much...”.

“I know how you could make up for it...” R replied, watching him sideways, a quick smirk on his lips. Enjolras shivered, in a pleasant way, and that felt really strange, absurd even. 

Never had he felt this intrigued with someone he didn't know at all...

“How many jobs do you work?” he asked all of a sudden. 

“What? Oh, three at the moment. As soon as I have all the money I need to go all around the UK by train I'll quit them all, though. And I'm almost there”. 

“All the UK by train? Is this what you do in your life? Work and then travel? _Cool,”_ he whispered the final word, because it was something so far from his lifestyle that he could only be afraid of it. 

“Well, I've already done all France and all Italy, plus Spain and Portugal. The UK seemed cool enough. And I also work while I travel. You know, there's a blog called _Drunken Travel Journal_ , it's pretty famous and it's mine,” he proudly explained, “There's an indipendent publishing company that pays me for what I write, and I love taking photos, and I've always written travel journals since I was a child, so it's something I love doing...” Enjolras listened to him talking about his journeys and his projects for about ten minutes, then they entered the airport area. 

Grantaire shut up, parking in a place indicated with “FIRST HOUR – FREE”. 

 

“So...” Enjolras started, after a few seconds of staring each other without saying a word, “I'll collect my suitcase and head inside. I'll check in and everything. I'll be alright-” he stopped talking when he realised R had already gotten out of the car and was getting inside the departures hall himself, carrying Enjolras's suitcase. 

“Wait, are you so impatient to get rid of me that you can't freaking wait a second so I say goodbye properly?” he snapped, running to catch up with him. 

Grantaire frowned, then he looked away. 

“Your flight is not boarding yet, you have time...” he whispered, more to himself than to Enjolras. 

Enjolras watched him carefully. The always present smile on his lips, which was now a bit more forced than he'd seen it before, those big blue eyes that were purposefully fixed on the boring floor, and then a plaid shirt, a T-shirt and, again, too tight jeans. And, if Enjolras had not known yet, he then knew what his type was. 

 

He needed to say something, whatever came to his mind would be okay. “Does your UK tour include Edinburgh?” he asked, forcing him to look him in the eyes.

“Why?” R smirked, playful once again. 

“I'd like you to text me when you get there. I would like to meet you, I'd- I'd like to see you again,” he confessed, being the one to look away this time.

“Well, if me giving you my number wasn't obvious enough: I'd love to see you again, too, Apollo”. 

Enjolras was about to point out that he hadn't, in fact, given him his number, when he understood why there were two phone numbers on that post-it note. He burst out laughing, suddenly and wholly. 

Then he took Grantaire's shirt and tugged him closer. “May I?” he murmured, the other smiling of his somewhat mischievous smile. 

“You had to ask, of course. _Consent is important..._ ” he joked, Enjolras rolling his eyes in the mean time. “Yes, you may kiss the-”. 

He never got to pronounce the word, whether it was going to be  _bride_ or not. 

 

Enjolras still had his lips on Grantaire's, one hand in his curls, the other man's hands on his back, holding as tight as humanly possible, when the announcement came.

“Fuck. They're boarding my flight, and they're almost done with it. I-”.

“You have to go,” R agreed, pushing him away, laughing. 

“I'm texting you later,” Enjolras promised, straightening his jacket.

“You do that, Apollo, or I'm going to stalk the hotel's archives to find your address and come and kick your ass,” he answered, still chuckling.

Enjolras stole another rapid kiss, before disappearing in the crowd. 

 

_** To: R ** _

_ In Edinburgh, going to miss your crappy hotel. _

 

_** From: R ** _

_ Not as crappy as you, chéri. And you won't miss it half as much as you will miss me. _

 

_** To: R ** _

_ WTF. Did no one tell you about subtlety? _

 

_** From: R ** _

_ You're talking! Shall I remind you my pants? _

 

“What are you smiling at? You're staring at your phone screen like a teenager on Tumblr, what's going on?” Ferre enquired, while they were driving back to the city.

The temptation to dismiss the question with a quick “nothing” was strong, but Enjolras tried explaining something.

“You've heard that, Courf?” he turned to the back seat, “All the times we tried to set him up with someone and all he needed was a crazy hotel steward in Belgium...”.

 

_** To: R. ** _

_ I'm afraid they won't be easily forgotten.  _

1Yes, what do you want, sir?

2Mister...Enjolras, welcome in Belgium. Here is your key, your room is number 150. It's on the first floor, on the left. If you need anything, press 1 on the phone or come down at the reception desk.

3[Dutch/Flemish – according to Google Translate and the three words I know] Okay, okay. Thank you, bye. Yes, thank you. Goodnight!

4Good evening, how can I help you?

5There are no restaurants here. You have to go in the city centre if you want to eat something.

6Well, you could phone the Chinese. Or you can call for pizza. If you're going to order pizza, order one more...

7Ah, the British and their aplomb. An imprevedible sight is enough to make them lose control of themselves. We're going to laugh, my friend. We're going to laugh.

8It's all right.

9I told them they couldn't play music at this hour of the night, but all they said was 'here, have some vodka'. I'm going to call the police, I'm really sorry.

10[Italian, that I'm really sure of] No, m'am, I'm calling the police, it's all going to be alright. Goodnight.

11It was Italian, not Spanish.

12So, coffee?

13Don't take that cappuccino! It's horrible. Wait.

14Homophobic cunt.

15I think he's coming, my dear. See you later.

16Good evening.

17Are you going to stay in Belgium another day?

18Is this an invitation?

19 [French] We've lost him. [Dutch] Yes. Definitely. We've lost him.

20Good morning, Apollo.

21Do you need anything else before you leave?

22Hello?

23Eponine! God almighty, this idiot only speaks English. Quick! Quick!

24Grantaire, you stupid idiot, it's your future husband!

25He's more oblivious of what's going on than you are, you're made for each other! I can't believe this!

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on my Tumblr (same name of this account).  
> I apologize again for all mistakes.


End file.
